Description On 15 December 2019, police in riot gear stormed Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University and attacked unarmed students protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which makes religion the basis of Indian citizenship. In neighbouring Shaheen Bagh, a few women-mothers, other relatives and friends of the students-came out into the streets in outrage and anguish. They sat on a main road demanding repeal of the CAA which, twinned with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), could make Indian Muslims aliens in their own country. Soon, similar protests broke out across the country in a display of civil resistance of a kind never seen in Independent India. Shaheen Bagh and the Idea of India examines how the sit-in by a small group of Muslim women-many of whom have stepped out of their homes alone for the first time- has united crores of Indian citizens of different faiths and ideologies in a fight to save the principles of equality and secularism enshrined in our Constitution. It also throws up many important questions: Can Shaheen Bagh-and the many other 'Shaheen Baghs' it has inspired-reverse the damage that has been done to our Constitutional democracy in recent years? What has sustained this non-violent movement despite vilification and persecution by the central and state governments and their police? Will it survive the aftermath of the brutal communal violence, provoked in the main by members of the ruling party, that devastated northeast Delhi in February 2020? What form will the movement take after the Shaheen Bagh protest site was cleared by the police on 24 March 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak? Will it continue to build new and transformative solidarities in our society? This timely and necessary anthology comprises interviews with some of the brave women at the core of the protests; ground reports by journalists and social activists like Seemi Pasha, Enakshi Ganguly, Nazes Afroz and Mustafa Quraishi; and essays by leading thinkers and writers, including Nayantara Sahgal, Harsh Mander, Subhashini Ali, Nandita Haksar, Apoorvanand and Zoya Hasan. It is a book that must be read by everyone who cares about India as a liberal democracy.

From Delhi to Chennai, a million Shaheen Baghs. A copy of the Constitution in one hand, the tricolour in the other, Shaheen Bagh became a symbol of a vibrant democracy and secular pilgrimage. But who were these women who braved it all? Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement is a moving tale of the brave women of Shaheen Bagh-patient, persevering and unbelievable peaceniks-who raised their voice for the deprived and the discriminated. Initially starting out as a cry of anguish against the allegedly discriminatory laws of the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, it soon became a modern-day Gandhian movement for equal rights for all citizens. The book is a result of the authors' abiding focus on the movement, including spending time with the brave hearts almost every day of the protest from dawn to dusk and beyond. The authors slept in the open near the protest site to understand what it takes for a ninety-year-old woman to leave the comfort of her bed during a chilly winter night and stand up for the future of each one of us as equal citizens of the country. The book recounts how the women did not abjure ahimsa even when their opponents stooped to barbs and bullets. It recaptures for the reader the riveting cry for democracy that was Shaheen Bagh. Authors Ziya Us Salam and Uzma Ausaf take us on this glorious journey of the making of Shaheen Bagh and how it became a metaphor for resistance, spawning a hundred Shaheen Baghs across the country in a bid to restore the sanctity of the Constitution, the national flag and the national anthem.

This book details the movement against India's Emergency based on newly uncovered archival evidence and oral histories.

Not much is known about what is arguably the world's, and certainly India's, largest Islamic organization -- the Tablighi Jamaat. From poverty-stricken peasants of Bihar to dairy farmers of Mewat, its members attend three-day retreats in local mosques, and at times, the Markaz in Delhi. They come of their own free will, at their own expense. The Tabligh tells its members to look within, that life is about internal cleansing with regular prayer that paves the path to spiritual uplift. Unlike other Islamic organizations that balance the here and the hereafter, the Tabligh is concerned only about 'matters beyond the sky and under the earth'. Its steadfast refusal to take a political stand has stood it in good stead. It is the 'ideal Muslim organization' for some -- focused solely on introspection in isolation. Now, for the first time, author Ziya Us Salam provides an inside view of the organization that unwittingly became a 'hotspot' during the novel coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

The book 'Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story' is published from ground research material on the Delhi Riots that occurred in February 2020. This material was collected by the authors and their team during their many visits to the riot-affected areas of North East Delhi. The research team met both Hindu and Muslim victims of the violence and religious leaders of both communities who attempted to de- escalate the situation. The book contains eight chapters which narrate the fact and evidence-based story of the dharna-to-danga model, planned and executed by Urban Naxal and Jihadi elements in Delhi.

The idea that India is a Hindu majority nation rests on the assumption that the vast swath of its population stigmatized as 'untouchable' is, and always has been, in some meaningful sense, Hindu. But is that how such communities understood themselves in the past, or how they understand themselves now? When and under what conditions did this assumption take shape, and what truths does it conceal? In this book, Joel Lee challenges presuppositions at the foundation of the study of caste and religion in South Asia. Drawing on detailed archival and ethnographic research, Lee tracks the career of a Dalit religion and the effort by twentieth-century nationalists to encompass it within a newly imagined Hindu body politic. A chronicle of religious life in north India and an examination of the ethics and semiotics of secrecy, Deceptive Majority throws light on the manoeuvres by which majoritarian projects are both advanced and undermined.

By raising a conceptual debate on ‘New Social Movements’, Pathania examines contemporary student resistance and analyses protest methods, strategies, networks, and the role of various caste, sub-caste groups, and civil society organizations in the struggle for social justice to envision a new cultural politics. The volume also discusses student activism in the aftermath of the suicide of PhD scholar Rohith Vemula at University of Hyderabad and the Azadi (Freedom) campaign at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The University as a Site of Resistance scrutinizes the debate on nationalism and processes of democratization of institutional spaces.